Supposed monetary hawk Kevin Warsh, who was officially sworn in as the 17th Fed Chair earlier this week, will now face the dilemma of staying true to his hawkish roots or caving to his unabashed high-rate hating President. That is, of course, unless there’s a deeper plan at play…
Last night, Cornell professor Dave Collum hosted Michael Lebowitz and Stephanie Pomboy for a deep dived into ‘How F***ed Markets Are’ where Dave posited the theory that Warsh man be a demolition man for a managed crash.
Collum and co. also talked about the insane disconnect between the economy and financial markets… and why Pomboy has increasingly abandoned financial assets altogether in favor of gold and hard assets.
Dave’s Fed truther theory and other highlights from last night below:
Retail Retards
Collum warned that modern markets have become completely detached from traditional valuation discipline… but that reality will eventually set in.
“It’s my assertion that probably greater than 50% of the investors in the world don’t understand what valuation means… Everything’s a Bitcoin price now.”
Standard valuation metrics have compounded roughly 4% annually for 45 years and are now firmly in “the nosebleed section,” yet “nobody cares,” per Collum.
Classic warning indicators are now near historic extremes. Lebowitz noted that “CAPE is near its all-time high. It’s above the 1929 level and just short of the dot-com level.” He argued the bigger danger may actually be hiding in supposedly “safe” stocks like Walmart and Costco.
Pomboy has opted out of the mania altogether. How? Real assets.
“Markets can go on longer than you can remain solvent betting against it…. I finally just sort of resigned myself to buying gold… At the end of the day I have been outperforming those markets by only gold.”
Why Warsh?
Collum posed the question of Kevin Warsh as Trump’s Fed Chair pick. Trump regularly announces that interest rates are too high and yet picks the ostensible hawk of the bunch to lead the Fed? But that may be a facade, according to Lebowitz:
“I think Kevin Warsh and Jerome Powell are the same guy.”
Lebowitz argued that the market may be projecting qualities onto Warsh that simply are not real. He acknowledged that Warsh currently sounds tougher, but there’s no way he’s gonna cut rates. “I thought he may come in and try to do 25 just to appease the president. There’s no way he could do that after the CPI and PPI data we had this week.”
Every Fed chair talks tough before markets crack (Greenspan was an Austrian/Ayn Rand-adjacent philosopher prior to his reign of easy money).
“Warsh was there in 2008, ’09 when they were introducing QE,” Lebowitz added. “Powell came off as very austere until the COVID hit the fan.”
Collum floated the darker theory that Warsh may have been chosen precisely because he is viewed as credible enough to oversee a painful reckoning. “What if Warsh’s assignment is ‘we need someone with the guts to usher this sucker down?’”
Check out the full debate for their deep dive into the ticking timebomb that are private credit markets and more. Also available on YouTube and Spotify.